1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle preferential treatment system, an electrically powered vehicle and a server. In particular, the present invention relates to a vehicle preferential treatment system for preferentially treating electrically powered vehicles such as hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles, and an electrically powered vehicle and a server used in the system.
2. Description of the Background Art
As environment-friendly vehicles, electrically powered vehicles such as hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles have drawn attention. A hybrid vehicle is a vehicle using, in addition to an engine conventionally used as a power source, a DC power source, an inverter and a motor driven by the inverter as power sources as well. An electric vehicle is a vehicle using a DC power source, an inverter and a motor driven by the inverter as power sources. Hybrid vehicles have already been marketed and practically used.
In recent years, attempts to realize environmental protection by giving preferential treatment to environment-friendly vehicles such as hybrid vehicles so as to urge transformation to environment-friendly vehicles including electrically powered vehicles have started. For example, in California, U.S.A, an operation to give preferential treatment to vehicles satisfying rigid exhaust criteria and fuel-consumption criteria such as hybrid vehicles are carried out to allow them to travel HOV lanes (High Occupancy Vehicle lanes). The HOV lanes are priority lanes where only share-ride vehicles are allowed to travel and there is less traffic congestion compared with ordinary lanes, enabling comfortable driving.
A system to give preferential treatment to specific vehicles is well known. For example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2002-163756 discloses an exclusive road entry/exit control system for automatic travel vehicles. In this system, communications are carried out between a ground road-to-vehicle communication device and a communication device of a vehicle of AHS (Advanced cruise-assist Highway Systems: travel support track systems), and automatic inspection of an automatic traveling function and identification of AHS vehicles are carried out. Then, only AHS vehicles are allowed to enter an exclusive road, and registration processing of a vehicle ID when entering the exclusive road and erasure processing of the vehicle ID when leaving from the exclusive road are carried out.
In the current background that hybrid vehicles are used increasingly, it is convenient to apply the system as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2002-163756 by referring to the operation in California, U.S.A. for example, to electrically powered vehicles such as hybrid vehicles for those managing the preferential treatment given to electrically powered vehicles and for those using electrically powered vehicles to which the preferential treatment is given.
However, there may be a case where contributions are not always given to environmental protection by giving the preferential treatment uniformly to electrically powered vehicles by identifying types of vehicles (whether an electrically powered vehicle or an ordinary vehicle in which an engine is the only power source) as the system disclosed in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2002-163756. For example, even in a hybrid vehicle, if it travels depending largely on the engine, it cannot be said as contributing to environmental protection.